'Migration and Memory' at Russian icon museum features Jewish artists

Sunday

Nov 26, 2017 at 7:10 AM

After a series of revolutions in 1917 changed virtually every aspect of Russian life, Jewish artists recorded those seismic cultural and historical transformations in works of striking beauty and power. A revelatory new exhibit, “Migration and Memory,” drawn from the collection of emigres Vladimir and Vera Torchilin of Boston, brings that century of turmoil and hope alive at the Museum of Russian Icons in Clinton.

By Chris Bergeron, Daily News Correspondent

CLINTON - After a series of revolutions in 1917 changed virtually every aspect of Russian life, Jewish artists recorded those seismic cultural and historical transformations in works of striking beauty and power.

A revelatory new exhibit, “Migration and Memory,” drawn from the collection of emigres Vladimir and Vera Torchilin of Boston, brings that century of turmoil and hope alive at the Museum of Russian Icons.

Subtitled “Jewish Artists of the Russian and Soviet Empires,” it features about 100 paintings, drawings, prints, posters, illustrated books and sculpted and decorative objects which have never been shown before in a New England museum.

While many artists will be known only to specialists, their richly varied works capture the breadth of Jewish life in Russia and in exile with startling immediacy.

Visitors will see a wide variety of exciting art in varied media such as revolutionary Leon Trotsky’s image on a lacquerware box and an earthy drawing of a cobbler, a lithograph of Russian heroes in combat, an oil painting of angels playing trumpets, and much more.

Winestein said the exhibit provides fascinating examples of how Jewish artists survived the upheaval, violence and displacement of the 20th century to create memorable work in other lands.

“Yet (they) were able to respond creatively and make things of beauty as well as engage culturally in each new place or country,” she said. “This is not just an exhibition of Russian art, but of French, American and European art made by artists who nevertheless carried with them the influences and experiences of the places and lives they left behind.”

While the museum, founded in 2006 by Gordon Lankton, former CEO of Nypro Inc., frequently exhibits from his collection of more than 700 sacred icons, this show offers visitors a revealing counterpoint of secular Russian life over the last century.

Museum CEO and curator Kent Russell said the exhibit’s works “demonstrate the direct connection to the art of the icon.”

He praised “Migration and Memory” for tracing “the influence of Jewish artists and thinking in creating what we accept as modern art and thought.”

“These artists set the course for modern Russia’s cultural development and as these artist moved across the globe they brought the avant-garde with them. It would be hard to define the roots of any 20th century artistic movement without acknowledging the effect that these Jewish artists had on their contemporaries worldwide,” he said.

Russell credited the exhibit for breaking “new ground by tracing the trajectory of Jewish artists and thought from shtetl [Jewish village communities], to pogrom, to migration across the globe where these radical innovations were disseminated to create one of the foundations of 20th century art.”

The extensive collection from which the works on display were drawn began in Moscow with Vladimir Torchilin’s parents who were friendly with notable Soviet artists, including several who were Jewish.

Vera and Vladimir Torchilin, who moved to the U.S. in the 1990s after the fall of the Soviet Union, have expanded their collection to include works by Russian and Soviet artists of all faiths, as well as Europeans and Americans.

A distinguished professor and director of Northeastern University’s Center for Pharmaceutical Biotechnology and Nanomedicine, Torchilin said, “I was always interested in Jewish history and culture.”

“Such interest was not well received in Soviet Union, so this made it even more attractive,” he said. “With time, I assembled a pretty good set of Jewish books and objects as well as many paintings of Jewish artists.”

Beyond the exhibit’s evident beauty, Winestein expressed hope visitors would sense the “societal and historical layers” of Jewish life revealed through the works on display.

“There is something in the exhibition for everyone - a wide variety of artistic styles, media, types of objects spanning the Russian and Soviet Empires as well as Europe and the U.S. pre- and post-World War II,” she said.

Winestein has organized the show in a loosely chronological order so visitors can circulate through the museum’s main gallery as if witnessing the century unfold, stopping in eight subsections related by geography or themes such as “Revolutionary Beginnings,” “Repressive Policies’’ and “Non-Conformity.”

Winestein said, “I hope the visitor can experience the show in many layers: the purely aesthetic impression of the works themselves and the feelings they convey, the historical context and experience of Jews in the 20th century that they reflect, as well as the more personal insight onto a lifetime of collecting.”